Research History

I had a pretty typical US undergraduate experience at the University of Iowa - a series of part-time jobs, long hours at the library, two unfortunate years of chemistry, and a fake ID. Even so, I graduated in 1999 with an honours degree, and headed off to Argentina to study penguins for a season. I returned to start an MSc degree at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver - and drove out to western Canada for the first time with a car full of possessions. My MSc examined the tradeoffs between parental care and migration for the western sandpiper, a cute little wader that spends its summers (luckily for me) in western Alaska and migrates through the Vancouver coast in autumn. I got to catch them in both places. I loved Vancouver, but I needed some sun. In 2004, I moved to Queensland and did a PhD with Craig Franklin on the effects of fluctuating temperatures on development.

I had a few years away from academic life - taking care of my baby girl Nelle and recovering from breast cancer treatment. In 2013, I started a postdoctoral fellowship studying the metabolic and molecular mechanisms for early death in semelparous mammals. You can read more about that here.

Personal Interests

I love photography and writing - and have developed these largely on my food blog Easy Peasy Organic. I have dreams of integrating my loves of photography and writing with my love of science ... so stay tuned on that. I also love traveling with my little family of 3.